Wireless digital networks, such as networks operating under the current Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standards, are spreading in their popularity and availability. In a wireless local area network (WLAN) deployment, a number of clients can be connected to the same wireless network via one or more access points.
The IEEE 11ac standard introduces 80 MHz and 160 MHz wireless communication channels that overlaps with channels (e.g., 40 Mhz and/or 20 Mhz) as specified in IEEE 802.11n standard. Accordingly, sending packets in an 80 Mhz wireless communication channel may be infeasible if the entire bandwidth is not available, for example, because of the overlapping 40 Mhz may be occupied and thus causing the 40 MHz part of the 80 MHz channel busy. Hence, it is important to select an optimal channel bandwidth through which a packet will be transmitted from a network device.
Conventionally, a network device maintains at least two queues that facilitate network packet transmissions. The first queue is maintained by a software module, and the second queue is maintained by a hardware module. During operations, the first queue feeds a number of packets to the second queue periodically. The hardware module selects a channel bandwidth at the time when each packet is transmitted from the second queue. The selection of channel bandwidth typically involves determining which channel has the best quality at the time of transmission, for example, by performing clear channel assessment.
However, in many use case scenarios, the channel having the best quality at the time of transmission may not be the best channel for transmitting a particular packet. This can happen, for example, when the channel with better quality will be occupied by a scheduled activity in the near future. Therefore, it is important to consider a variety of parameters in dynamically and intelligently selecting wireless channel bandwidth for transmitting network packets on wireless networks.